Industry Conferences: An Observation

On Monday, I had the honor of presenting at Realtime NY '11.  I was privileged to share the stage with some important people in social business, such as @Pistachio (Laura Fitton of OneForty), @rdublife (Rick Wion of McDonald's) and @DonorsChoose (CTO Oliver Hurst-Hiller).

I think the people at @RealtimeReport put together a sensational faculty and day-long event filled with keynotes, panels, case studies and networking.  

I gave a presentation essentially ripped from my business planning process for next season.  My thesis was, perhaps other publishers or brands could benefit - or at least have an insight - from seeing how we look at social media marketing, what we measure, plans for future, et. al.

There were probably 100 or so people in the venue (BB Kings, which was awesome).

But, in the presentations before mine (McDonald's, DonorsChoose), and even during mine, the audience seemed more intent on their laptops, iPads and mobile devices, Tweeting about where they were and what they were her hearing as opposed to absorbing it.

In fact, I later checked Twitter to see what had been written about my own presentation.  There wasn't a single comment about  what I said was "the biggest single success we had in the last season" (it was focusing all efforts around earned media proposition).  Did anyone hear me?  Or did they hear and it just doesn't resonate?

It made me wonder what the ideal outcomes are for attendees.

I do know that I had an important personal lesson, which is when other people are making presentations that I made an effort to see and hear, I am going to put my Blackberry down and take notes.